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    • Florida Amendment 2 is intended to decide whether hunting and fishing are a right
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    Florida Amendment 2 is intended to decide whether hunting and fishing are a right

    Kathleen William Posted on

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    Bart Fisher grappled with the conflicting values ​​at play in the campaigns for and against this year's ballot question on Amendment 2, which would add the right to fish and hunt to the Florida Constitution.

    If 60% of voters approve, fishing and hunting, including using traditional methods, will forever be preserved as a public right and the preferred means of responsible management and control of fish and wildlife.

    Supporters say the initiative is necessary to protect a valued cultural heritage, namely harvesting the bounty of the great outdoors. Opponents say it is unnecessary and could potentially undermine most hunting and fishing regulations, including another constitutional amendment banning the use of gill nets for fishing.

    Fisher is an angler who spends as many weekends as possible on a 23-foot Carolina Skiff in the Gulf of Mexico with his wife and two sons. The Florida resident sees no threat to Florida's fisheries.

    When a neighbor first told Fisher about the effort to make hunting and fishing a constitutional right, he said it sounded “ridiculous.”

    “We already have the right to hunt and fish. “You have to get a license and pay a few fees here and there, but you have the right to do it,” Fisher said.

    Then he listened to a Salt Strong podcast with Travis Thompson, executive director of the conservation group All Florida, a leading proponent of Amendment 2.

    The discussion centered on an attempt in Oregon to ban hunting and fishing, which Fisher found alarming – and led to him voting yes.

    “You’re trying to stay one step ahead of the competition here. That’s why they brought it up,” Fisher said of attempts in other states to actually ban hunting and fishing. “So I say, ‘Okay, yeah. Great.' ”

    Amendment 2 aims at restrictions on hunting and fishing

    Opponents such as James C. Scott of the Sierra Club said they supported hunting and fishing as recreation and management tools but found the proposal poorly worded. They fear that this would undermine current management practices to the point where there would not be much left for hunting and fishing.

    Writing for the Florida Bar Journal on behalf of the Florida Bar's animal rights division, Macie JH Codina, an attorney, and Savannah Sherman, a law student, found little evidence of a threat to legal hunting and fishing in Florida.

    “There is evidence that Florida’s proposed constitutional amendment would pose a threat to wildlife and the ecosystem as a whole,” Codina and Sherman wrote.

    The initiative was placed on the ballot by the Florida legislature. The House sponsor — Rep. Lauren Melo, a Republican from Naples — said she recognizes hunting and fishing not only as popular pastimes but also as a source of revenue for the work of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

    “Many people don’t realize the economic value that fishing and hunting provide to our great state, which raises just over $15 billion annually,” Melo said as she introduced the ballot proposal to the House of Representatives. “The passage of this law is a strong signal that we support and promote our fishing and hunting traditions and want to protect them for our future.”

    The resolution passed both chambers and received a “no” vote from term-limited state Sen. Lauren Book, the chamber’s outgoing Democratic leader.

    Proponents say constitutional law is stronger than state law

    More than two dozen groups, including the Sierra Club, the Humane Society and the Florida Wildlife Federation, said Florida law already guarantees the right to hunt and fish.

    Florida law expresses the legislative intent that Floridians have the right to hunt, fish and shoot game “subject to the regulations and restrictions prescribed by the state constitution.”

    But supporters of Amendment 2 said they wanted stronger protections for hunting than what state law provides.

    Groups like the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the Florida Guides Association and Future Hunting in Florida tell their members that laws can easily be changed or repealed at any meeting of the legislature. But once an amendment is adopted, it can only be changed by another amendment.

    Scott said that's why he and others are fighting the change. They fear another 1994 amendment banning gillnet fishing would be invalidated if passed.

    Will the change hinder future attempts to regulate hunting and fishing?

    They warn that the words “preferred” and “traditional” in the amendment are posts that can be used to make legal arguments that threaten nearly all of Florida's hunting and fishing regulations.

    “The true intent of the language is to allow people to challenge all of the restrictions currently in place,” Scott said, including bans on the use of steel traps and hunting in state parks and on private lands.

    Supporters reject Scott's criticism. Thompson of Davenport and Chuck Echenique of Tampa of the Sir Isaac Walton League, a 100-year-old grassroots conservation organization, led the campaign to put Amendment 2 before voters. In public appearances and newspaper comments, they said the proposal did not involve abolishing existing regulations.

    “These claims are simply scare tactics,” the two wrote in an op-ed for Florida newspapers.

    And FWC Chairman Rodney Barreto said that “'traditional methods' do not roll back regulations or reset the FWC's regulatory authority.”

    The interface between individual rights and conservation

    The James Madison Institute, a Tallahassee-based think tank dedicated to limited government, has released a change guide that underscores the opposition's concerns. JMI noted that the use of “preferred” makes a vote on Amendment 2 a question of “conservation versus individual rights.”

    Individual rights were at stake in 2013 when then-Tallahassee District Judge Jackie Fulford decided to block the FWC from enforcing the constitutional gillnet ban, Scott said.

    A Wakulla angler challenged the regulation implementing the ban, arguing that it negatively affected his right to make a living. An appeals court reinstated the ban after about a week and upheld the rule.

    Scott said it only takes a single person or interest group to go to court to exercise the right to hunt black bears, for example.

    People might say, “‘I want to hunt in state parks. I want to use gill nets. The constitution gives me this fundamental right. Now repeal this rule,'” he explained.

    “If Floridians believe there are judges and courts who disagree with this, all they have to do is turn to Leon County,” Scott added.

    No public polls are available on Amendment 2. According to state campaign finance reports, a political action committee affiliated with Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, a potential 2026 gubernatorial candidate, gave the Vote Yes on 2 committee a $100,000 contribution in April.

    Two checks for $250,000 followed: One came from the Florida Wildlife Foundation, a nongovernmental support group of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission; the other was from the International Order of T. Roosevelt, formerly known as the Shikar Safari Club International Foundation.

    “Advocates have raised more than $1 million for the Vote Yes on Amendment 2 political action committee. The Sierra Club's $50,000 donation is the largest and only five-figure contributor to the No To 2 political action committee. Vote No has raised $82,000.

    James Call is a member of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida Capital Bureau. He can be reached at [email protected] and on X as @CallTallahassee.

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    Kathleen William
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